The enduring anguish of the kind of starvation that has taken hold in Gaza lives on in personal and collective memory for generations. Starvation also lives on in the body, especially for the young. For children who survive acute malnutrition, the resulting physical and cognitive damage can last a lifetime.
Those of us who have studied famines over many decades recognize the dreadful signs when social collapse is imminent — when the bonds that tie a community together are fraying and order is breaking down. It is a moment at which death rates grow exponentially and beyond which the fabric of society becomes far more difficult to repair. This disintegration portends chaos and conflict, delinquency and a fierce hopelessness that can breed fresh terrorism. Gaza appears to be passing into that zone now.
It is a calamity that was foreseeable, and foreseen. Starvation takes time; authorities cannot starve a population by accident. Since March of 2024, international bodies have repeatedly warned that Gaza is on the brink of famine. This week, a U.N.-backed group issued yet another alert warning that “the worst-case scenario of famine is playing out.” Food-security experts haven’t had access to the data they would need to make a final judgment about whether conditions in Gaza officially constitute a famine. At this point, the distinction is irrelevant.
Seasoned humanitarian-aid professionals can still bring Gaza back from the brink — if they’re given the chance. For months, Israel has restricted the flow of aid into Gaza, fueling a crisis of hunger that is growing more dire by the day. Food stockpiles were already desperately low in March, when Israel imposed a blockade on the enclave, citing unverified claims that Hamas had been systematically stealing food from the U.N.
When Israel partly eased restrictions in May, it began operating a new Israeli- and U.S.-backed aid distribution system run by a private group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, largely displacing traditional aid agencies. This system has so thoroughly ignored conditions on the ground that it raises the question of whether Israel has been intentionally engineering starvation in the strip.
The aid provided by the G.H.F. is inadequate by several standards. The group’s ration boxes, according to nutritionists, are unbalanced and lack nutrients that are essential for starving populations, especially children. A malnourished child requires specialized food such as Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based therapeutic formula — not pasta or lentils, which the G.H.F. offers instead. The most severely malnourished need intensive care in a hospital. To prepare food included in the ration boxes, people also often require fuel and clean water, both of which are in short supply in Gaza.
Even if the G.H.F. were supplying adequate aid in Gaza, that is no guarantee that it would reach the people who most need it. The group replaced the 400 or so aid distribution centers previously run by the U.N. and its affiliates with just four feeding stations that are far from where most people now live and are open only briefly and on short notice. To get access to these ration sites, people had to linger in military zones, ready to rush in as soon as they opened. Crowds ended up funneled past Israeli military posts — and dozens have been killed on days when Israeli soldiers or private military contractors have opened fire or in the crush of a stampede.
The recent airdrops have done little to alleviate the situation on the ground: The amounts of aid are too small, and there is no mechanism to ensure it reaches Gaza’s most vulnerable populations. We have already seen airdropped supplies land in dangerous combat zones.
The Israeli government claims this system is necessary to prevent aid from falling into the hands of Hamas. There are no verified cases of Hamas looting aid from convoys on a large scale. And in May, the U.N. developed a proposal that would have established safeguards on aid distribution, including the use of sealed trucks with QR-coded cargo, U.N. monitors at every crossing point, GPS-tracked trucks on pre-cleared routes and regular audits of aid recipients.
What we’re seeing today in Gaza — desperate people being robbed of food by gangsters and Hamas members, with rations being sold on the black market — is a predictable outcome of Israel’s own arrangement. When social order breaks down in a famine, the last to starve are those holding the guns.
It’s unforgivable that we’ve gotten here. There are other famines in the world that are comparable in intensity and horror. Mass starvation is unfolding in and around the Sudanese city of El Fasher, where the Sudanese Army and its allies are defending a siege and onslaught by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both sides are fighting a war of starvation, stealing food from civilians and blocking aid. If the warring parties were to agree to a cease-fire this instant, given the perilous roads and the underfunded aid operation, it would be weeks or months before sufficient succor could reach the starving.
In Gaza, by contrast, the U.N. and other experienced aid organizations stand ready with the resources, the skills and the proven blueprint to provide essential humanitarian relief. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel decided tonight that every Palestinian child in Gaza should have breakfast tomorrow, it could undoubtedly be done. Israel’s latest measures — airdrops and daily pauses in operations to allow more aid to enter — fall far short of the full spectrum of emergency assistance that Palestinians in Gaza need.
To end starvation in Gaza, Israel must allow humanitarian-aid professionals to do their job. It must facilitate the movement of U.N. aid convoys without onerous checks and delays. It must help establish the necessary monitoring measures to ensure aid reaches those who need it most. It must assist Gaza’s hospitals in setting up intensive care units for the many malnourished children at death’s door.
Israel and the international community have a window of opportunity to deliver lifesaving aid to millions of people. We cannot wait until it’s time to count the graves of the children who have perished, declare it a famine — or indeed, a genocide — and say, simply, “Never again.”
Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of books including “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.”
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